


ghost stories

by matadelanimasola



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Child Loss, F/M, Gen, Maternal Mortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:41:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23354845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matadelanimasola/pseuds/matadelanimasola
Summary: a beginning that isn't a beginning. a beginning that is a beginning. the middle of the story, and the other middle of it. an end. the end.a ghost story in six vignettes.
Relationships: Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Original Character(s), Trevor Belmont & Original Character(s)
Kudos: 6





	1. a beginning that isn't a beginning

Trevor is a haunted man in more ways than the obvious.

The first time Sypha watches him stare at something only he can see, she chalks it up to him trying to learn how to function sober again. That, or maybe he's had a bad concussion or two that scrambled his brain. One is as likely as the other at this point. Alucard sees the ghost first. He catches a glimpse of something through a patch of shifting fog early one morning. He also sees Trevor staring right at it. Alucard isn't sure what's going on, so he keeps his thoughts to himself and keeps a much sharper eye on their monster hunter.

They both notice how he talks under his breath a lot. At first, they think he's just muttering to himself, until it's suddenly crystal clear that he's having a conversation. With who or what, is now the question. Alucard finally clues Sypha in on what he's been seeing, only for her to tell him in return that Trevor has been saying a name in his sleep.

Striga.

If Trevor is being stalked by a striga, this is very bad indeed. But… There's something entirely odd about the whole situation. When Trevor thinks his companions aren't looking, and he feels safe talking to the ghost without being discovered, he talks to her as though they're old friends. Old, close friends.

It is a woman, they discover. The longer they spend on the road together, the more complete a picture they get. She never manifests as such. They can only ever see her through something else. A reflection in a pond, a shape outlined in smoke from the campfire, someone moving just on the other side of those leaves. She is entirely elusive and it bothers Alucard to no end. He spends hours debating with Sypha about what Trevor's companion could be, and how she came to be attached to him.

They're all three exhausted and at their wits' end when it all comes to light. They've been traveling through a forest that seems to never end and everyone is snappy around the fire that night. The clearing they've set up camp in is perfectly round and perfectly devoid of plant life. An oppressive air hangs over them that has nothing to do with the summer heat.

When Sypha looks up from her bowl, the woman is staring at her from the other side of the flickering flames. She starts in surprise. This is the clearest the ghost has ever been. If it wasn't for the fact that she can only see her through the flames, Sypha might have wondered when they picked up a straggler.

Trevor looks up when Sypha starts and his eyes widen. She's staring directly at Striga, her mouth open slightly in shock.

"You see her?" he asks. He's ashamed of the way he sounds so desperate.

Sypha nods. So does Alucard. They all stare at the woman. Trevor sees her as flesh and blood; Alucard and Sypha see her as a shade, only visible where light plays tricks.

"How long has she been with you?" Alucard is staring openly now, at the corporeal man and the incorporeal woman beside him.

Trevor turns to look at her along with his companions. "I was seven when she came to me."

Sypha thinks the ghost looks like she wants to say something, but maybe it's just a trick of the light. Trevor scratches his chin, fixes the two with an unreadable look. "She's not actually a striga, near as I can tell.

"It's been… _mentioned_ before that I talk about her in my sleep," he finishes more than a little awkwardly when his companions fix him with hawkish looks. "I assumed you've heard that, too."

"Who is she-- _was_ she?" Sypha this time.

Trevor looks at Striga. Striga looks at Trevor.

And slowly nods.


	2. a beginning that is a beginning

The beginning of our story is a town in the mountains some five hundred years before. A woman dies in childbirth. Her husband mourns her for seven days, and a year after, and then for the rest of his life. He makes a small chest of cedar and puts everything that belonged to his wife inside it. The dress she married him in. Her favorite mitpachat. A rock she found at the river on laundry day, perfectly perforated.

The clothes she made for their child, never worn.

The memories go into the chest, and the man vows to never look at another woman again. The rabbi tells him he should remarry and start again. The man says he can't bring himself to love another. The town looks on his grief with compassion, and leaves him to whatever life he wants to make for himself.

This story is not about him.

This story is about the woman.

She died. Mostly. Not exactly.

The depth of her husband's love and devotion caused something strange to happen. Sometimes, out of the corner of his eye or in a shadow cast by the flickering reed lights, he swore she still walked their cottage or sat beside him on quiet nights. As the years stretched on, he became absolutely convinced that his beloved wife had come to keep him company until he joined her in death.

When he died, a new wainwright moved into his house. The chest stayed, locked, in a corner of the workshop where the new man pushed it as he arranged things to his liking. He always meant to break the lock and find out what was inside, but something always came up right as he was about to fetch a hammer.

He heard a soft voice from time to time, especially on sabbath, joining him in prayer. He couldn't put a gender to it or even really hear what it was saying, but it never bothered him. He never saw the ghost, but the ghost saw him.

When the second wainwright was an old man, a Frenchman came to town. Leon. Called himself a vampire hunter and asked if there was anywhere for him to stay while he was passing through. The wainwright was the only person to offer him shelter.

As Leon stepped through the door of the man's house, he knew something strange lived there, too. He only meant to stay a day or two, but it quickly became a week as he tried to piece together the mystery. His host told him the story of the town, as well as of the house and its prior occupants, and at last Leon knew. There was a striga inside that mysterious cedar chest and it was only a matter of time until it freed itself.

Leon left in the night, the chest tucked under his arm.

The following night he saw a ghost across the fire and it scared him half to death, until he looked closer and saw that she was _crying_. Damn if that wasn't the oddest thing he'd ever seen a ghost do. It kept happening, too. Everywhere he went, she was there with him, staring at him and silently weeping. The chest started to make him uneasy. Maybe he shouldn't open it, after all?

There's only so much silent judgement a person can take, so one day Leon took his dagger to the lock and prised the chest open. He was poised for an attack, waiting for the newly-freed witch to come after him. But no attack came. The wind whispered in the leaves around him. He looked down into the chest and beheld what used to be someone's life.

A dress, neatly folded. Two locks of hair, one almost impossibly fine and downy. A rock with a hole through it.

He understood then why the ghost wept.


	3. the middle of the story

Leon was an old man when the ghost finally spoke to him. It seemed to him as though she finally had enough energy to do more than stare in silence and sit on the edge of the veil between worlds. She asked him why he took her from her home, and he was ashamed to tell her that he had no reason for it aside from curiosity. The chest had intrigued him, but a simple haunting was much less exciting than a trapped striga and so he had put her chest away with all the other accumulated ephemera from his life.

She asked him to return her to her town and the house that had been her home for so long, but he died before he could ever make good on it. His son never followed through, either, and so the ghost found herself tied to the Belmont line.

She became the Belmont Ghost, mostly ignored through the years, except for when one of the family realized the resource she was. No one else knew what was in the Hold as well as she did, not even the ledger that was supposed to list everything kept within the catacomb. For one thing, the ledger made no mention of a ghost, only a small chest filled with a few trinkets.

When Trevor Belmont was seven years old, he found that chest and those trinkets. He didn't understand what any of it meant, but the nice woman with the kind eyes was always gentle with him, even when he was being a right hellion.

Five hundred years changes a lot of things. The ghost was still bound to the chest, but as the centuries passed and her power changed, and her bond with the Belmonts deepened, she found she could walk further and further from the items that bound her to the mortal plane. 

So when Trevor's family were slaughtered and the house abandoned, she went with him. He was too young to be so alone, and her heart broke to see the depth of his grief. Staying in the ruined house while young Trevor went out into the world never even crossed her mind. Children should not be abandoned.

The ghost went with him. She was the one thing from Before that didn't change when the world fell down around his ears, and Trevor was eternally grateful for that. Even when she looked at him disapprovingly and didn't say a word. She became his confidant, his best friend, his sister, his mother.

She was everything when he had nothing.


	4. and the other middle of it

The truth of the story leaves Sypha and Alucard with hollow aches in their hearts. It's a pain that neither can put into words. There's grief, of course, for the ghost's loss and for Trevor's; and something bittersweet, for a new family found in the wake of destruction.

The ghost takes a liking to Sypha and Alucard. They see her more often and for longer, and while she can't speak to them the same way she speaks to Trevor, they hear a voice whispering under the white noise of the world around them. To Sypha, she sounds like any one of her cousins quietly reciting a Story to herself, the words lost to the breeze. To Alucard, she sounds like a townswoman murmuring her shopping list over and over to not forget anything on the way to market.

She smiles fondly at them, when they manage to catch a solid look at her through the shifting Veil.


	5. an end

Our story ends with a library in smoldering ruins and a small chest smashed to splinters.

As the dust settles, Trevor is ever more frantic in his search for the ghost. Dracula is dead, his hordes have been driven out, but where is the ghost? She should be so easy to see, the air choked with ash and dust, but she's nowhere to be found. Trevor's heart sinks into his gut.

The Hold was torn to pieces during the fight, what if the worst happened and Striga's chest was damaged?

He doesn't believe it until he lays eyes on it. Embers must have landed on its contents. The two locks of hair that were so brittle with age have burned away. The frock and scarf are singed and smeared with soot, in total disarray. Only the rock is untouched. Alucard presses it into Trevor's unfeeling fingers, bends his hand to hold it close. Sypha stands behind them both, hands on Trevor's shoulders as he kneels in the wreckage of what used to be his home.

They all watch for her for days afterward, hoping against hope that she somehow survived the destruction of the token that bound her to the living world. She never does come back, and Alucard watches as Trevor and Sypha rumble off to find some new adventure.

On the seventh day after Alucard waved them off, there's a storm loud enough to wake the dead. Alucard goes out to survey the damage once the clouds have cleared and the birds are singing again. Branches, and entire trees, have been knocked down in the night. By some contrivance, miraculous or not, Trevor's tree is undamaged.

Tucked in the gnarled roots, however, is a lump of fabric. Fabric that, on close inspection, is very familiar indeed. The embroidery is much more vibrant now that it isn't faded by time, and Alucard is struck by the realization that Striga is _beautiful_. He gently unfurls her from the ball she was curled into, and when his hand rests against her cheek in wonder at how warm she is after who knows how long left out in the damp, her eyes blink open.


	6. the end

Trevor and Sypha return two years later, full of tales from their adventures. They find Alucard has built a small hospital of sorts, with six beds, a private exam room that doubles as his office, and living quarters upstairs. He seems happy. Certainly like he's in a better place than he was when the duo left to find Sypha's people. They sit in the sun and catch up until the sound of the front door opening echoes through the building and out to where they're sitting. Alucard looks unbearably smug. He ignores the questioning looks when he calls out to the newcomer.

A soft voice comes from inside, and Alucard stands to help. The hair on the back of Trevor's neck rises. He knows that voice. Alucard's body blocks his view of the new person until he steps aside. All the blood leaves Trevor's face. This must be a ghost of a ghost, because Striga stands before him, hair wrapped the same as ever, tucking something into the pocket of the embroidered apron covering her pregnant belly. She smiles at him the same way she always has: so tenderly that it nearly breaks his heart.

"This is Shamira," Alucard says. He looks from Trevor's stricken face to Sypha's expression of complete confusion, to Shamira's gentle smile.

"Shamira is my wife."


End file.
